Las Vegas Real Estate News
Severe Shortage of Inventory.
This could be the year you unload your property in Las Vegas. The chart above shows the supply of homes available for purchase is less than 2 months. People are paying way over market value to get into something and it’s getting harder for buyers. Lending standards are also lowering which is leading us into another mortgage storm that will probably burst in the fall / winter of 2019. The time in which these storms break are difficult to predict but there is no doubt the clouds are building. All it takes is some weird catastrophic event for the market to crash. The internet goes down for a week, China attacks Russia… Godzilla rises from the ocean. Who knows. What we do know is that when something like that happens, people freak out, businesses pucker up and people lose their jobs. You want to be sitting on a pile of cash when there is blood in the street. It will be “The crash of 2006” all over again and we will be here for you to pick up cheap abandoned houses.
Lease / Options Have Ended
Our flagship product of lease/options has finally come to an end. Here are the 6 reasons why have discontinued lease/options:
- Despite all our efforts to educate tenant/buyers with the perils and low success rates, we have been attacked with multiple lawsuits and have been getting at least one Real Estate Division complaint every quarter. Some of our investors have had to share that burden in terms of personal drama and lawyer’s fees. There is no reason to drag our investors through the mud anymore.
- From a business perspective, the revenue Limestone Investments earns from these sophisticated instruments are tiny. The return for all that hard work isn’t worth the lawsuits and division complaints.
- We expect a major correction within the next 2 years. This means that investors who are in the middle of a lease/option could get their clock cleaned. The last thing we need is to have a bunch of investors at our gates with pitchforks and torches.
- Our available inventory of properties has dwindled down so much that it isn’t practical to keep that old marketing program going. That advertising effort made sense when we had 25 properties available. There have been a few months recently when we had nothing available.
- Our tenant screening process has improved leaps and bounds from our old methods. In the last year, our evictions and the number of difficult tenants have dropped sharply. For example, in 2015, we were evicting 2 tenants a week. Now we are down to maybe a couple a month. By the way, most of those are related to lease/options. The significant improvement in tenant quality has reduced the costs of rehabs and shortened turnaround times. Our “regular tenants” are outperforming our “lease/option tenants.”
- If investors want to squeeze out a better return than a “regular tenant”, “short terms rentals” have been printing money. The returns are double that of a “regular tenant.” There are many risks with short term rentals but so far the numbers are amazing. HOWEVER, before you jump into short term rentals, you need to digest this page first: Short Term FAQs.
Hard Money Lending
If you don’t know what to do with your cash, you should consider offering hard money loans to buyers who are not qualified for traditional loans. Rates vary according to the risk associated with the buyer. You will get higher returns on a buyer who has poor credit or income history. The riskier the buyer, the higher return. We are not lenders but we know someone who can assist you in offering hard money loans to risky buyers. Skip Rueger has been doing this for over 30 years and has been referred by one of our trusted mortgage lenders. He is licensed by the State of Nevada and is an expert at connecting you with buyers who need hard money. IMPORTANT: We do not receive compensation from Skip and we cannot guarantee the safety of your investment or your returns. Do not call us if you buyer stops paying 3 years from now. Hard money is associated with high risk. If you need to know more about how it works please contact Skip Rueger directly.
Land Speculation
We have come across a large property that could be converted to several homes. This is perfect for someone who specializes in land development. The property is for sale at $780k and anyone with development experience could probably quadruple their return. Some of you may have that experience so contact me if you are interested in that property. If you don’t have any experience developing land, you don’t want to play with this.